Ecstasy in Pregnancy Is Bad for Baby, Study Finds

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Taking the club drug Ecstasy while pregnant can interfere with
the baby's motor development after birth, a new study finds. The
drug also seems to raise the odds of having a baby boy.

The research is the first to recruit women during pregnancy and
then follow their babies after birth to examine the drug's
effects.
Ecstasy, or MDMA (which stands for
3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a synthetic drug that
produces feelings of euphoria and emotional warmth in users.
These warm-and-fuzzy feelings may make the drug seem relatively
harmless, said study researcher Lynn Singer, a professor of
environmental health science, pediatrics and psychiatry at Case
Western Reserve University in Ohio.

"Ecstasy may be particularly seductive and misleading, as it has
been called a 'humanogenic' drug because of the feelings of
empathy it engenders, and it has also been promoted as a
therapeutic drug promoting the ability of individuals to
relate to others," Singer wrote in an email to LiveScience.

But according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Ecstasy
use can cause anxiety,
sleep problems and loss of cognitive function. Now, Singer
and her colleagues have shown for the first time that the drug
can damage a developing fetus, too.

Drugs and pregnancy

Using ads, fliers and word-of-mouth, Singer and her colleagues
recruited 96 women in London who admitted to using recreational
drugs during pregnancy. They interviewed each woman on her drug
use, including the month before the first trimester, because
women may conceive during this time and not be aware of their
pregnancy. After the babies were born, they were checked for
health and developmental problems at the age of 1 month and 4
months. [ 11
Facts About Babies' Brains ]

The study found no significant effects of Ecstasy use at the
baby's 1-month checkups, but they did notice a trend in which
babies of moms who had used Ecstasy during their pregnancy moved
slightly slower than their healthy counterparts. At the 4-month
checkup, this tendency became statistically significant: It was
now clear that the babies of Ecstasy-using mothers had slow,
delayed movements and overall delays in motor function.

There was a dose-response effect to the drug, such that women who
had used Ecstasy more heavily had more delayed babies. On
average, each woman took a total of 25 Ecstasy tablets during
pregnancy and the month before conception, though the majority of
the women in the study stopped using the drug before the third
trimester of pregnancy. Sixty-one percent of the participants
said they took the Ecstasy at clubs or raves.

The results held even after the researchers accounted for other
variables that might impact
a baby's development, including expectant moms' other drug
and alcohol habits, as well as demographic factors.

Missing girls

Strangely, women who used Ecstasy during pregnancy were much more
likely than usual to give
birth to baby boys. Seventy-one percent of the babies born to
MDMA-using mothers were boys, compared with 46 percent for the
non-MDMA-users in the study.

Researchers aren't sure what causes this gender imbalance, though
studies suggest that exposure to some chemicals can skew the sex
ratio. Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB), a flame retardant used in
the 1970s but now banned in the United States, increased the odds
of a male birth to parents exposed to the chemical, for example.
It's not clear why the chemicals in Ecstasy might have this
effect, but the drug could decrease the likelihood of a female
fetus or embryo surviving pregnancy, the researchers speculated.

There have not been any studies on how widespread Ecstasy use is
in pregnant women, but Singer and her colleagues were concerned
about the drug because it is popular
among young people of childbearing age. In the United
Kingdom, Singer said, an estimated 500,000 MDMA tablets are
consumed every weekend. In the United States, she said, about 9.5
percent of 12th-graders and college students say they have tried
the drug.

The researchers aren't yet sure whether the motor development
problems seen in babies of MDMA users are permanent, or whether
they will disappear as the babies age. Singer and her colleagues
have funding to follow the babies through 18 months of age and
are now working on 12-month checkups.

The researchers reported their findings online March 3 in the
journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.